SEO is a highly complex process, and it can be easy to make mistakes. Given the number of things you need to take care of, mistakes are inevitable while working in SEO. But there are certain things that you need to absolutely avoid while kickstarting your SEO campaign. Here are a few of them:
Keyword Stuffing: This is one of the most common and dumbest mistakes made by SEO professionals. While working on a content strategy, you must do your best to avoid stuffing keywords everywhere in your content. If Google detects that, it can cause severe problems for you as an SEO professional. A good thing about preventing keyword stuffing is that you will never have identical or similar sounding words anywhere on the page – this makes sure that no ‘keyword cannibalization’ takes place either!
Buying Backlinks: Buying backlinks is a big NO. Google has been cracking down on websites that have provided their link-building services for money, and you must avoid doing the same thing too! There are many blackhat SEO techniques out there to get quick results, but if you do not want to land in trouble with your client or business partner, it’s best to avoid them altogether.
Backlinking Too Much: Another major mistake made by novice SEO professionals is trying too hard to get quality backlinks. Linking domains can appear manipulative as per Google algorithms – so try not linking more than two to three domains every month (or even less). This way, you can focus on creating better content instead of just focusing on how to get backlinks.
Google Penalties: You should never try to work around Google’s algorithms and policies – because you will only end up triggering a penalty against your website instead! If you are aware of any mistake that has been made, be sure to carry out the necessary changes as soon as possible. This way, it won’t cause any problems for your SEO campaign in the future. The other reason why you need to avoid this is that once you land yourself in trouble with Google (and if they penalize your site), getting rid of all issues can take months or even years at times!
Re-wording content from other sources: If you are thinking of re-wording content from different sources and putting it on your website, you need to think again. Google has become extremely smart – they have software that can quickly identify whether or not someone is stealing another person’s work! Also, this won’t help as far as user experience goes since readers can tell the difference between original and copied content.
Using only images/videos: While search engine crawlers cannot read text written inside pictures or videos, some people make the mistake of using those instead of actual words. This makes their links appear less relevant in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages), which causes a drop in rankings, eventually leading to poor traffic numbers. If you want good results for your website, you need to balance images/videos and actual text – the latter being more important.
Not having enough social interactions: You may not notice it as much as Google might do, but your site needs higher volumes of traffic for better rankings in SERPs! If people aren’t sharing or linking back to your content from other sites (or even commenting on them), then there’s no way that search engines will be able to detect those pages either. The only solution is to make sure that you are present everywhere online with a strong presence through SEO campaigns and social media marketing. Only this can help increase organic traffic numbers over time!
No focus on mobile: One mistake made by many marketers these days is not providing enough importance for mobile devices. If your site isn’t optimized accordingly, then chances are that Google will rank those pages lower than their counterparts since they aren’t user-friendly as per their standards! Remember that more users now access websites using smartphones rather than desktops/laptops these days – so do not miss this aspect even if you feel that it is not that important.
Still targeting keywords: For many years now, Google has been saying one thing very clearly – if you want to be successful in SEO, your content needs to provide answers to questions! Targeting long-tail keywords might still make sense here and there (to attract traffic), but only when they are used at the right time with proper context can these phrases bring about positive results. If you are trying to force it too much, the chances are that people will figure out what’s going on sooner or later, which may end up hurting your rankings instead!
Inappropriate Internal Linking: While linking from one webpage to another within a website might seem like a great idea at first glance, it’s not something worth doing if done haphazardly. What happens when there are too many links pointing towards pages with a very high bounce rate? Google will notice this and stop sending traffic to that page, which will be a significant loss for you.
Hiding Affiliate Links: This happens when SEO professionals start hiding affiliate links – they use redirects or cloaked URLs so that users cannot easily see the link at first glance. If done without taking care of everything else from an SEO perspective, it can have catastrophic results on the website’s search rankings and its reputation with visitors looking for information about your products/ services online! There are several cases where affiliate marketers were banned by Amazon simply because their product reviews contained affiliates’ links in them. This made sure that none of those reviewers ever worked with Amazon again!
As you can see, avoiding these mistakes should be your number one priority if you want to kickstart a successful SEO campaign for your website. Whether or not an SEO professional is aware of these mistakes, they must try and avoid them! However, it’s always better to take expert advice before starting with any SEO work on the website – that way; there are fewer chances of errors occurring during the process.
